Tag Archives: Poetry

One of the three roads that led to my house may have been the longest, but I was sixteen, had a bicycle and could ride really fast. Putting all my weight on the handle bars, I could pump the pedals and whizz past the lime-washed houses, the landscape passing by in grey-green blur.

But back then, I liked to slow pedal down this road. Through the shimmering heat, I would see the road-tar turn black beneath the scarlet Gulmohar blooms… would smell the besan ladoos, long before crossing the sweet shop… would whistle to the sleepy mongrel by the side of a shuttered comic book store and then stop awhile to cheer the local cricket team.

This road wound past a kids’ park, hopped over a culvert, snaked past a kite maker’s workshop, stuttered near a century old banyan tree… and then gently careened beneath her balcony.